Working in the Coal Mines

A hundred years ago, a bunch of my male ancestors were stuck working in coal mines -- on my father's side, in Indiana and Illinois; on my mother's side, in Pennsylvania. Most of them eventually died of black lung. But not all of them.

A couple of days ago, my mother showed me three April 1904 newspaper clippings I'd never seen before. These clippings are about Charles Heater, her mother's uncle. (My mother's mother, Catherine Currier, was born in 1914 and turned 93 earlier this week). Here's the content in three brief articles:

HEATER DIED TO-DAY FROM HIS INJURIES.
Charles Heater, a 16-year-old boy living on West Market street died in the Moses Taylor hospital this afternoon from injuries he received in the Cayuga mine a week ago. Heater was a driver boy and was hit in the head by flying pieces of coal from a blast. As a result he sustained a compound fracture of the skull and was otherwise seriously injured. Since the accident he has been hovering between life and death.

THE HEATER FUNERAL
The funeral of the late Charles Heater will be held tomorrow morning from the residence of his parents, Mr. And Mrs. E[manuel] Heater, No. 611 West Market street, with appropriate ceremonies. The cortege will proceed, headed by the deceased’s fellow members of the United Mine Workers of America to Puritan Congregational church, where, at 10 o’clock Rev. R. J. Rees will conduct services. Internment will be made at Forest Hill cemetery.

LAST TRIBUTES
Charles Daily Heater, the 15-year-old son of Mr. And Mrs. E. Heater, of Scranton, formerly of Pocono Lake, died at Moses Taylor hospital, Scranton, on the 14th inst. [April 14, 1904] and was buried on Saturday. His death was the result of an accident in the Cayuga mines. Among the floral tributes was a beautiful pillow from his boy comrades in the mines.


Today's Rune: Defense.

Birthdays: Eiji Yoshikawa, Louise Bogan, Enid Blyton, Lloyd Nolan, Angus Wilson, Alex Haley, Mike Douglas, Fernando Arrabal Terán, Andre Dubus, Joe Jackson, Richie Ramone (Reinhardt), Hadiqa Kiyani.

Charles Heater, RIP.

All Evidence to the Contrary

All evidence to the contrary, Phil Spector wants to be known as a kindly man, an artiste with a soft heart rather than a freaky, addle-brained tyrant with a penchant for misogyny. We can't ask Lana Clarkson (sometimes spelled Clarkston) the truth, since she is dead by gunshot to the head -- and we can't really trust what he says, since he's still on trial for causing her demise on the palatial Cali grounds he calls home in the first place.

Ronnie Spector, Phil's ex-wife, has described the man's deranged behavior, certainly. Happy birthday to her, still among the living on the East Coast, far away from Phil's palais penitentiary.

If there is justice in this case -- and if Phil Spector really did do the deed -- perhaps Lana's revenge will be like that of the rattlesnake head that bit a man today -- even though said snake was already dead. (Somehow the head flew up and bit him a la the horror film Reanimator).

The moral of the story is: Even the fallen can be dangerous. Is Lana "Barbarian Queen" Clarkson more like little David or more like overstuffed Goliath? And if she called him David, did he call her Bathsheeba? Was he more Samson in their brief relationship and she more Delilah -- or was it the other way around? (Furthermore, does he have to wear a wig because she cut off his locks, or does he delight in wearing wigs because he adores having his dome redecorated?)

Is the prosecution more like J-LO and less like Jello? Will OJ attend the after-party with MJ? And what ever happened to Robert Blake? Ah yes, he got off. Mystery Man: "Call me. Dial your number. Go ahead."

If Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner gives testimony, will it be on behalf of Spector or Clarkson? Stay tuned for further details . . . and keep an eye out for Patty Hearst.


Ronnie Spector lives!

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Birthdays: Henri Nestlé, William Willett, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Dean, Eddie Fisher, Ronnie Spector (born Veronica Yvette Bennett), Ian Anderson, Rosanna Arquette, José Antonio Domínguez Banderas, Claudia Christian, Justin Theroux, Angela Michelle Harmon Sehorn.

Ciao!

Half the Clothes and Twice the Money

Now this here story I'm about to unfold took place in the early '90s -- just about the time of our [first] conflict with Sad'm and the I-raqis. I only mention it because sometimes there's a man . . . I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? Sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here . . . (~~The Stranger in The Big Lebowski, 1998).

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. (~~Meursault in Albert Camus' The Stranger, 1942).


"Bond Girl" Karin Dor in space age silver. When traveling, pack half the clothes and twice the money and -- if you can swing it -- something silvery like the moral equivalent of a pistol. Crash helmets extra unless riding a bike or a Vespa. You don't even need the actual money -- electronic access should suffice.

Today's Rune: Protection.

Birthdays: John Dryden, William B. Travis (The Alamo), Philip Larkin, Sam Elliott, Jonathan Kellerman, Melanie Griffith, Amy Stiller, Whitney Houston, Gillian Anderson, Rhona Mitra.


She got the gold, she got the silver: Michelle Yeoh, reprised.

Ciao, Chapel Hill!

Mere Anarchy

It’s interesting to me how much feeling Woody Allen stirs up in people. Mere Anarchy (N.Y.: Random House, 2007), his new book of short stories, adds more spice to the mix. I’d like to hear this one read out loud just to hear the wordplay. In lieu of that, here’s an excerpt from “This Nib for Hire.” Here’s the premise: shady film producer E. Coli Biggs persuades Flanders Mealworm, an underemployed writer (is there any other kind?), to novelize a Three Stooges movie as part of a grand marketing scheme. “The notion of taking a brief hiatus from my serious writing to amass a nest egg that could subsidize my War and Peace or Madame Bovary was not an unreasonable one to contend with,” Mealworm observes.

Eventually, our writer-hero presents the opening for his Three Stooges adaptation, and here it is:

Oakville , Kansas, lies on a particularly desolate stretch across the vast central plains . . . What’s left of the area where farms once dotted the landscape is arid space now. At one time corn and wheat provided thriving livelihoods before agricultural subsidies had the opposite effect of enhancing prosperity . . .

[Enter the Stooges:] The dilapidated Ford pulled up before a deserted farmhouse . . . and three men emerged. Calmly and for no apparent reason the dark-haired man took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a long, counterclockwise circle. A horrible grinding sound broke the silence of the Great Plains. “We suffer,” the dark-skinned man said. “O woe to the random violence of human existence.”

Meanwhile Larry, the third man, had wandered into the house and had somehow managed to get his head caught inside an earthenware jar. Everything was suddenly terrifying and black as Larry groped blindly around the room. He wondered if there was a god or any purpose at all to life or any design behind the universe when suddenly the dark-haired man entered and, finding a large polo mallet, began to break the jar off his companion’s head. With pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of man’s fate, the one named Moe smashed the crockery. “We are at least free to choose,” wept Curly, the bald one. “Condemned to death but free to choose.” And with that Moe poked his two fingers into Curly’s eyes. “Oooh, oooh, oooh,” Curly wailed, “the cosmos is so devoid of any justice.” He stuck an unpeeled banana in Moe’s mouth. . . (Mere Anarchy, 41-43).



Today's Rune: Signals.

Birthdays: Nelson Appleton Miles, Albrecht von Kesselring, Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, Dino De Laurentiis, Joe Tex (b. Joseph Arrington Jr.), Dustin Hoffman, Connie Stevens (b. Concetta Rosalie Anna Ingoglia), Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya, Branscombe Richmond, Anastasia M. Ashman, Faye Wong, Tawny Cypress.

Ciao!

Feeling Existential

I've gone through three ratty paperback copies of William Barrett's Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958). It's a happy take on existentialist writers ranging from the religious (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky) to the not-so-religious (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus). Happy for the atomic age, anyway.

With Jack Kerouac's On the Road fast approaching fifty years in print come September, let's reach back to 1986 for a little biting satire by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper from their album Frenzy. You may or may not recall their college radio hits "Elvis Is Everywhere" and "Burn Down the Malls." I'd post the videos, but they're pretty ragged in a low budget 1980s way.

Feeling Existential (an excerpt)

Standing outside of a Winchell's
You're feeling very existential

You dreamed you were Whitman --
Walt, the poet, the bard --
But you're really more like Slim:
An evil tub of lard.
Lookin' in the mirror,
You think you see James Dean
Now you turn to Dylan --
You "could'a been him . . ."

Feelin' so depressed
You're lookin' so distressed
And all the girls you just want to undress
You're uglier than your high school principal
You're just feelin' very existential

You were kicked out of the college
Your Daddy couldn't afford
So you went out "On the Road"
In a '57 Ford

Then you went to Europe
You felt like Hemingway
You even loved a woman there
But you found out she was gay

Man, you gonna never get rid of your pimples!
You're just feelin' very existential

"Nothin' is nothin' -- Everyone's a twit!
Gonna tie myself up,
Have a little fit . . ."

So grab your granny glasses
Dress all up in black
Find your journal
Read Jack Kerouac

Bed on down through the winter
You're feeling very existential

You wish you had a Kirk Douglas dimple . . .
Instead you're crawlin' inside a Chinese temple . . .
And your mind, mind,
is so, so . . . simple

Standin' outside of a Winchell's
Feelin' very existential . . .



Through a Glass, Avengers

"Bond Girl" Caterina Murino.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Birthdays: Nathanael Greene, Nicholas Ray (b. Raymond Nicholas Kienzle), David Duchovny, Jimmy Wales, Rachel York, Charlize Theron.

Ciao, Beatniks!

Forever Eight Fifteen

To the people of Hiroshima and all victims of war and violence, remembrance and prayers.

To Catherine Currier, my last surviving grandparent, a birthday salute. She was four when the Great War to End All Wars ended, when her father died of the Spanish Influenza; turned thirty-one when Little Boy destroyed Hiroshima. Fifty during the Tonkin Gulf incident. Sixty when Nixon resigned. Seventy when Reagan was elected to a second term. Ninety when G.W. Bush was elected to a second term. Today she turns ninety-three in Vancouver, Washington, with Mount St. Helens visible on the horizon.


"Bond Girl" Michelle Yeoh. Her birthday, too.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Birthdays: Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de la Vallière, Alfred Tennyson, Paul Claudel, Dutch Schultz (b. Arthur Flegenheimer), Richard Hofstadter, Robert Mitchum, Norman Wexler, Andy Warhol, Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, Michelle Yeoh, Melissa George.

Hang On Sloopy

I don't write much poetry, so it's fun to see one of my poems in print from time to time. Old school publishing is slow, but when Pearl 37 arrived in my mailbox a few days ago, I was glad to see it even though it was a year-long process, because it includes "Lines from William Blake," my take on the breakdown of a traditional marriage. The journal Pearl started up in 1974 and has included, over the years, a lot of Charles Bukowski, among others. I particularly like the name for its association with Janis Joplin. Editors: Joan Jobe Smith (since 1974), Marilyn Johnson, and Barbara Hauk.

Today, it's Guy de Maupassant's birthday. One of his protagonists gives her take on how a progressive marriage ought to work, just the kind of thing that might scandalize a formal ceremony, even in 2007. Seems like a good deal to me when both parties are treated equally.

Now listen carefully: Marriage, to me, is not a chain but an association. I must be free, entirely unfettered, in all my actions -- my coming and my going; I can tolerate neither control, jealousy, nor criticism as to my conduct. I pledge my word, however, never to compromise the name of the man I marry, nor to render him ridiculous in the eyes of the world. But that man must promise to look upon me as an equal, an ally, and not as an inferior, or as an obedient, submissive wife. My ideas, I know, are not like those of other people, but I shall never change them. (~~Bel Ami, 1885)

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Birthdays: Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, Conrad Aiken, John Huston, Neil Armstrong, Wendell Berry, John Saxon (b. Carmine Orrico), Ron Silliman, Rick Derringer (b. Richard Zehringer).

Ciao!